Anthem of the Angels
by DenizenofTwilight
Summary: Naminé: a girl plagued by loneliness and a bit of insanity; thoughts of time lost speaks to her, but she can barely hold onto the whispers. Ventus: the person bound to Naminé by choice, though his true identity and connection to her remains unknown. Vanitas: The friend that tries to kill Naminé when she stumbles onto a semblance of clarity. What deadly secret has Nami stumbled on?


**Chapter One: Run, As If You Have a Choice**

**Naminé's PoV**

The girl watched on, transfixed, as someone began humming listlessly in front of her. Bending her arms slightly out in front of her, but so her hands could still reach back to cover her heart, Naminé felt very much like... well, a girl she'd seen swooning over chocolate on an anime once.

She remembered well, with her artist's eye, how the pinkette had stood on her tiptoes, tipped her head back ever so slightly (and the way her eyes had been closed and her nose perked up hadn't hampered things, either), as she seemed about to float away into the candy shop that the boy… that the boy was playing the flute in front of.

Yes, Naminé didn't doubt that her current actions were much like the girl's from the TV show. It was just so strange, she found... Strange to find someone humming a song that wasn't bound by the rhythm that was words. Ever since the girl had learned that the Fairfolk created songs, and how they used the repetition to remind humans of what they needed to do, she had- she had...

"Excuse me! Pardon me, miss!" Came the sudden exclamation of a blond boy before Naminé's very eyes. Blinking slowly, for she felt as though she might have met her long lost twin with how much they looked alike, anyway, Naminé didn't have time to acknowledge that the flute player she'd been admiring had left.

In fact, unfortunately for her, she didn't even know that the boy's abrupt—and even fearful—tone meant that he was going to come spilling into her, and he did. Much more roughly than Naminé would have ever imagined it happening, in watching Hercules as a child and seeing the Olympus columns come tumbling down, she went slamming into the beam directly adjacent from her arm, and thought very well that she might just have broken her shoulder in the onslaught.

As the familiar feeling of blood started to eat its way at blond's shoulder, she found she wasn't to surprised that the stranger was looking at her with sympathy, but... she supposed she would have been even more "besotted" to him, if he didn't hastily get up and start running again.

Sighing, as she felt the faux-wind he'd created cause her hair to sway into her bloodied arm, Naminé hoped that the superstition she'd obtained—about if her hair ever got into any of her bloodied limbs, it meant it was broken—was decidedly not true for once.

Getting up to her feet slowly, Naminé paid adieu to the instrument shop that had been calling her name, and knew it was far time that she got home.

Still... she had to look in the direction the boy had disappeared to—and was she imagining it? Or was there hay floating in her way and not the other?—and wonder.

...

"I don't know what you're being so meticulous about, Nam," Kinoshi said, as she paused in her ritual of brushing of her sister's hair, and set to gliding her lengthened nails against said sibling's cheek.

How Naminé had always hated her sister's fake nails, and she knew she always would. Sure, It was nice that her sister always wanted to fix her hair like this, but her nails were very much a nuisance. And moments like right now... when she was accidentally scraping Nami's cheek, scared the blond very, very much.

"I mean, while it's true I like to look at every possible outcome, myself—something I'm sure you get from me, little sister-there's hardly any factual evidence that wind can take launch in one side of the area, and not the other. I'd stop looking for answers, if I were you. This is crazier than your faerie song theory. At least _that _had some evidence," Kinoshi continued on, as she seemed to have gotten tired of Naminé's hair for the time being, and was now looking in her closet for even more tops to wear with rumpled tops.

While Naminé knew it would never be in her sister's behavior to dress like a whore or act like one, that didn't mean she wouldn't get away with accentuating a few things, as to get the job positions that she wanted.

"I suppose you're right, Kinoshi," Naminé lamented, a bit sadly, as she stayed in the chair her sister had left her in and folded her hands. Waiting... why did it always feel as though she was waiting for something? It was moments like this when Naminé wished she'd thought to bring that etch-a-sketch she'd gotten for that one Christmas. Or, perhaps, even more accurately... that she was more social at school, so she could have friends—or be in clubs, even—so she wasn't alone in this terrible, awkward moment now.

"Maybe- perhaps I'm going a bit crazy. It wouldn't be the first time I royally screwed up. I know that. And sometimes I see these things about how serial killers start out like me, and I become deathly afraid, that I - I..." Naminé continued on, not even realizing she was tearing her already torn skirt to shreds, or that tears had begun to brim atop her eyelashes.

"I can comfort myself in the knowledge that crazy people never think they're insane, and since I often think I am, I must be okay, but even then... does that even mean anything at all? Or am I just comforting myself? I don't know the answer to that Kinoshi, and I wish I did. Huh?"

Clapping a hand to her mouth, astonished, as her last words had left her mouth much more clipped, and stronger sounding than usual (and also very matter-of-fact: a tone that Naminé, for all intents and purposes, had thought she'd been unable to reach), Naminé—full of astonishment and amazement—quickly escaped from her sister's room.

See? Naminé had noticed in her peripheral vision that Kinoshi had been about to try and comfort her via statistics or something on a chalkboard, and though Kinishi's attempt _was_ very much appreciated... Naminé understood how oddly the two of them acted around each other.

And since she didn't even know how to feel about everything herself, she knew it would be good if she just let Kinoshi play with her hair the next day, and spare them both the weirdness of it all for today.

Still... this would be the first time that Naminé would ever go to school the next day without Kinoshi completely fixing her hair, and perhaps that was the most out there thing of all…

Running a hand through her elongated bangs (they were nearly so long, they were about to just become one with her hair, Naminé knew), she tried to sort out all of the things going through her head, and just what she was supposed to do with her life now. Moving to France had been something Naminé never would have even anticipated happening, and now… here she was.

With that change in mind, how was she even supposed to get her head around all the other changes that her life seemed to revolve around?

Slumping onto her bed in a heap, and with such sudden exhaustion that Naminé thought she was like to fall asleep, she found herself of all things fingering the side-swept curtains that she called her bangs. She… she liked her bangs... it was perhaps one of the few things about her life that hadn't changed.

Kinoshi—though Naminé loved her—had never had a hand in styling her younger sibling's bangs, and Naminé found that she was glad for it. Her bangs, at least, were still very much her. And when there were days where it felt like nothing else was, that was a huge burden off her shoulders.

Then—putting a strange hand to the indention at the hollow of her throat, after thinking about her locks—Naminé said quietly to herself, "I'll find you soon: whoever branded me. You're my true family, and maybe there I'll find some answers. Even if- even if I was only ever meant to be a slave to you. And who knows? Maybe I'll even find I like being a servant to you. My will is lost to myself, anyway, and I'm trapped. So very trapped."

And as those words fell silently and tiredly from the girl's lips, she had no idea that she'd unwittingly spoken a spell, and even less idea that the tear she'd cried before falling into an almost coma-like state had powered it.

**Ventus' PoV**

Standing outside her window watching her, the boy from earlier—Ventus—(though Naminé was yet to know that), watched on in shock at the blood staining Naminé's hair, as much as she had stared at the flute sounds from earlier.

Still... though it was true Naminé _had_ just uttered a magic spell (without even knowing it, even), Ventus—at least—wasn't acting the way he was because of an enchantment placed on him. He couldn't say the same for Naminé, though, who had seemed mighty transfixed earlier. And even within the blond's awful sister did Ventus sense magic…

Though it was true that Kinoshi had experienced an odd bout of "Naminé love" just a moment ago (Ventus had seen it first hand), he knew it had to be because Naminé had wished for such a thing to be so. Otherwise... because of her power and caliber... there was no way a human could get close to Naminé without feeling scared. There was no way!

Heck, even Ventus had been afraid around the girl earlier that evening. When he'd stumbled into her, and then miraculously understood who she was, he knew without a doubt that Xehanort had been trying to get to her.

But since Ven had succeeded in bleeding her, though, and had tied her to his form in blood magic, it had made Xehanort rethink his plot, but Ven didn't delude himself into thinking it would work for long.

The moment Naminé was in Xehanort's grasp, he would snag her faster than Ven could even get things to move in the wind around him. And as he was already beginning to become fond of the girl, Ventus knew he could never allow that to happen.

Yet he knew he couldn't exactly kidnap her to salvage the situation (he wasn't a creepy "hero" like that, all right? In fact, he wasn't even a hero at all), or anything like that. But neither could he constantly keep an eye on her, either. Just what was he to do?

The moment Naminé curled up into a fetal position whilst she slept, he knew. And so, Ventus cast another spell for the night. But it was the first one in a while that he'd gotten a kick out of.

Laughing a little bit at his own genius, as Naminé began to seem to be kicking ass in her dream, even, Ven couldn't help thinking, "Oh, man. She's going to get a kick out of this one!"

**Naminé's PoV**

As Naminé dreamed that night, she'd felt very much as if she were spinning in place. She imagined it being something similar to how floating endlessly in space must have been like. It also reminded her a bit of the merry-go-rounds she'd gone on as a child, but she of course knew that reasoning was flawed, for one _did _move when they were on one such thing, but she wasn't truly moving now.

Also, there seemed to be... a sort of stagnant static electricity in her dream, she thought now, as she got out of bed hastily, and set to put her socks and shoes on for school.

And as she'd been turning and turning like that—as if she had been a gear trying to get into synch with another one—Naminé couldn't help but think what her dream had really been about was a key of sorts. After all, one turned a key to open the door much like the way she'd been turning. And if you couldn't get the tumblers to release just right- Well, you could get shocked, if the situation called for it.

And if she had been dreaming about electricity err... lightning (it was hard to tell now, when the memory was fading so fast and easily from her memory), could it have been that the yellow of it was also supposed to coincide with the key? Or-

"Naminé, get down here in a jiffy, 'kay, honey? I know how much you love to drink orange juice, and if you don't hurry up, you won't have enough time for a glass after you brush your teeth!"

Smiling to herself good-naturedly, as she accidentally dropped her white sock onto her flufffy, brown carpet (and therefore succeeded in getting fuzzies all over her sock), Naminé acknowledged that a lot of things might tend to go wrong in her life, but at least her dad made her life just a bit more bearable.

It was even- Even worth going to school now, just so she could drink the orange juice like he wanted her to. Her dad... he knew her so very well, and Naminé was ever glad for the fact. Even if he was probably mainly telling her not to drink orange juice after brushing your teeth, because he didn't like the taste of them together himself.

Slamming her sock onto her foot finally (and deciding that maybe all the bits of fuzz might be good, and help to keep her feet more toasty on this cold morning), Naminé ran to the rounded, dark door of her bedroom and picked up her shoes, before running down the small and brown winding staircase, that she knew would be the death of her one day.

"I'm here!" Naminé finished, as she danced under the purple awning above the doorway to her kitchen, and stumbled unceremoniously to the round table before her. She felt pretty relieved, actually, that she'd only caught her toes on the last step. Thus was the reason she cheered about her own performance to her daddy.

Of course... part of the reason she'd been so exuberant was because she'd caught him right before he had to go to work. And, as it looked like, before he could call the school and tell her she wasn't coming in. As Naminé glanced at the white—and hilariously huge, compared to mobile phones—portable telephone in Sora's hand, and then locked her eyes with him, she knew they were having a battle of wills of sorts.

Naminé, though having no problem at all in wanting to escape the torture that was school, might have easily allowed her father to pull her free from the "jackals", as he called them. But then the school board would get on his case, and threaten to send him to jail, she knew. And though Naminé knew her dad would do all that and more to do right by her, she simply couldn't risk it, and so, she decided to somewhat pretend to be Kinoshi and play her despair off as something else.

Pressing her purple and rectangular shaped glasses against her nose, Naminé assured her father that, "I only wanted to miss school today, because I have a test later today. But then again... I stayed up late all night studying for it, so I think—no, I know—I'll be fine now. You don't have to worry, Dad."

Even though Naminé had thought she'd done a pretty good job in trying to convince her dad of her plight, and the fact that she was looking at a boa now (so as to pretend she was thinking about wearing it to a party with the other kids later or something) should have definitely won him to her side, Sora paused in the threshold of the house looking at Naminé levelly for a long moment, before he conceded to let her have her way.

"Alright, Nam. If you're sure, I'm not gonna doubt you. You're my special youngest born, after all… Anyway, I'll see you later, okay?" Sora said, as he crossed over to where Naminé was now pouring herself some orange juice, so as to try and assure her father even more.

Startled, as she turned around and got a face of her dad in her personal bubble, Naminé accidentally grabbed the coffee that was on the counter, instead of the O.J. she'd just laid out. And when her sweet, sweet old father pressed a kiss to her temple, she almost—via her guilt—spilled the hot coffee on Kinoshi, who was walking right in front of them with her face averted from the dad that only seemed to have eyes for Naminé.

Not liking at all the way this was going, Naminé decided then and there that she needed to starve off the newfound awkwardness in one way or another. So, even though she hated school and didn't even have to be there for another half-an-hour (and even though she should have been allowing her father to get through the door, as he was going to be late for work, and giving him back what was left of his coffee), Naminé bid her family adieu, and headed out.

And she maybe even mussed her hair some in front of Kinoshi, so the girl knew that their bond was still intact, and that she could do her hair later. Maybe.

...

As it was, Naminé wasn't really paying too much attention as she walked to school slowly and looked through her drawing book every now and then. While it was true the gleaming, eggshell colored sunlight above her was very picturesque—and that she enjoyed that this was the only place in the city that had gates barring things on either side of her, instead of just pillars—Naminé's attention kept getting sucked back to the boy who'd crashed into her the day before.

Thinking back on the whole ordeal, the artist wondered if maybe she'd been being somewhat hypnotized by the music that day, despite herself. She'd thought that the fae could only control music when their songs had words to them, since words were the oldest form of magic, but could she have been wrong?

Incidentally, as Naminé held her blue art book out in front of her, and flipped to a random page of a faerie of all things, she had to wonder if she was just being ridiculous. Maybe her theory about faeries hurting them was as much a crackpot theory as Kinoshi seemed to think it was. After all, they'd lived in harmony with the FairFolk since before anyone could even remember.

And weren't they pretty much their gods, and unrequited helpers now? If anything, Naminé knew she should have been thankful to the faeries, as she often thought her talent for drawing (the only saving grace she had in her life at times), had come from them, but...

She couldn't shake the feeling that there was a reason the faeries would want to hurt her people: now more than ever. And going along with that, Naminé found herself imagining that the relationship between the two had to be more strained than people liked to believe it was.

"Hehehehe. Well, you _are_ the little thinker, aren't you? Pretty smart of you to wander down one of the few paths not governed by us, but unfortunate for you that shrubbery is under my power. Now let's dance, wench!"

"Wh- who's there?!" Naminé muttered fearfully, as if she were in a bad dream, as she once again found herself clutching her hands to her heart. Whipping her hair this way and that (how strange; there was still blood in her hair, but Naminé had been sure she'd washed it out.), the girl found that she _had_, in fact, traveled much further and faster down the road than she'd even been aware of.

Stupidly looking at her drawing book for a moment—to see if maybe there was a portal in it, that easily could have explained how she'd traveled three blocks in the span of five seconds—Naminé had to wonder just why, of all places, had she ended up at what she liked to call "the upside down pine tree location".

Though it wasn't truly a pine tree, Naminé thought, its leaves had always seemed and felt very needle like to the girl. And somehow, instead of the foliage going upwards on this tree, like it would any other, this one decided to grow downward, to keep certain things obscured that Naminé had always been afraid to know of.

Everyone else, the young girl knew, had always been in love with this botany anomaly, but not her. It terrified her to no end, because...

Because she seemed to hear voices in her head whenever she was near it. Like right now, the voice was talking about shrubbery, but surely this had to be a tree, right?! No one—not even her—could get such a simple fact wrong, right?! Unless- unless it _was_ a rosebush or something. Then- that could mean-

"Hmm. You might just be smarter than I gave you credit for. This should be interesting."

Closing her eyes for a moment, and remembering everything her dad—and Kinoshi, even—had taught her about martial arts as a child, Naminé attempted to center herself, and only focus on where the sound was coming from.

Then, knowing it could only ever belong to the thing of her nightmares, Naminé looked up to where the trunk of this upside down tree dangled precariously close to the Milazo family's upper windows and saw a boy with golden eyes, that seemed to gleam fire, but who's hair and clothes seemed to be of ebony.

He was terrifying, Naminé realized, as he jumped down from his high perch, and almost seemed to glide down. The gleaming white canines he was displaying were particularly fear inducing, and it didn't take Naminé long to realize he was truly threatening her, and the coiled into a defensive stance accordingly.

Watching, horrified, as the boy got closer to her, Naminé couldn't understand how the tree seemed to be gusting in the direction he was walking, or how his skin seemed to glow like someone being burnt alive, though she sensed he was a sadist who would have enjoyed every minute of it.

"Now," the boy said, as he extended a hand out towards Naminé, and smiled at her every bit as fake as one of Naminé's own drawings was. "Why don't you let me see what you're made of, little girl?"

Gulping slightly, as she perceived the true intent behind the boy's words-that he'd tear her apart to see what made her tick-Naminé began taking slow steps backwards, towards the way she'd come from.

Looking around herself hastily, the blond girl meant to find anyone who might be around to help protect her, but as she found no one, she just prepared even more so to push the assailant's eye sockets into his skull, but most of all... she listened.

And it was then, as Naminé heard the voice cresting over her in echoes, that she realized who this boy was. Vanitas: the "bad boy" she'd been somewhat crushing on in her art class. The one person who'd shown her even a semblance of kindness was now aiming to rip her apart, more than his simple advance was already breaking her heart. All of that in her class, then- it had been a ruse, hadn't it?

Blinking back tears that she no longer wanted to cry anymore, Naminé punched her fist out into the air and turned it just so. What happened then was something Naminé could have never imagined herself capable of, even in her wildest dreams.

From the spaces between each one of her fingers to the next, a hot and white energy seemed to be pulled forth from her, as if tethered by a wire. Then, seeming to be in mind with what her thoughts had been, they flew higher and higher—looking like fireflies unleashing their wings against the night sky—until they eventually landed in Vanitas' eyeballs.

Naminé didn't stay to see what would happen next. Gathering up the part of her skirt, Naminé began running faster than her legs had ever carried her in her life.

As she charged down the lonely street, not wanting to take the sidewalk lest she trip over one of the cracks (and who knew? Maybe she could flag down a driver to come and help her), Naminé tried to make sense of all that was going on, and wondered if she should scream for help or not.

In the end, she decided the former thought could definitely be saved for later, and as for the latter, she should conserve whatever energy she could, while she was well ahead of Vanitas. When she eventually ran into someone, though, that would be another story entirely!

Hugging a stitch in her side, as exhaustion and lack of air finally started to win against her, Naminé decided that now more than ever would probably be a good time to go through someone's yard again. And so, going through a hole in the fence she'd once used to escape from bullies, Naminé trudged through the backyard of the Milazos', and desperately tried to get to their back door to ask for help.

It helped her case that they'd left their sprinkler on, and thus she could slide even faster towards her destination. It also helped that she was barefoot, and much of their grass sent her sprawling, anyway.

Finally reaching the large white door with its golden, lion knocker, the girl desperately began banging on it as fast and loud as she was able, shouting for help all the while. She didn't at all like the gazebo of her neighbors': standing sentry right over their small pond. It was too big and too much in shadow. Vanitas could have been easily waiting there, for his chance to snatch her, without her even-

"Naminé. Naminé! Nami, Nami! Will you stop actin' like a barbarian and drawing so much attention? Come with me, 'kay? Come with me!" Barely even aware of what was happening—or who the handsome youth at the door was, ushering her into the house and to safety—Naminé nearly flew through the threshold, as she longed to get in there and call the police, and have something substantial to hold onto, before she began crying uncontrollably.

It was only after a few seconds, that Naminé realized she was still standing on the small incline of steps that led away from the door, and that she was still partly against the door herself, keeping it open and giving Vanitas a chance he didn't deserve.

Screaming hysterically at that, Naminé leaped over the few steps that kept her from achieving true sanctuary, and screeched at the blond boy to close, lock, and deadbolt the door. She might have even told him to put his dresser against it, but she wasn't entirely sure. But as her heart started to slow down, and the boy picked her up and walked over the honeycomb floor tile, to put her in a long, pink loveseat, a few things started becoming very clear to Naminé.

One, that she was more than certain that Vanitas was a faerie, and that his attacking her when she'd been thinking about them hadn't been an accident.

Two, that there was something oddly off about herself, even (something Naminé had always suspected, but now had quantifiable proof of), as she'd blasted some sort of light at Vanitas' eyes, and had caused them to burn like liquid fire, and somewhat melt white liquid onto the ground.

And thirdly... she knew that the boy who had saved her just now, and was dabbing a cold washcloth to her head (just when had that happened?), had been the boy who'd crashed into her the other day.

At once, Naminé was irate, and sat up to give the boy a piece of her mind (thinking that everything that had happened to her lately hadn't happened until she'd met him), but when the motion seemed to make her head feel like it was under water, and her back gave out on her, she thought better of it.

"You've- you've never lived at the Milazos' before," Naminé accused weakly, as she sat up more easily this time, and stole the washcloth from the boy's hand, so she could suck on some of the water from it. She was so very hot and thirsty, and suddenly _so very_ tired.

She fought against sleep, though, as terror was ever a constant in her mind; she was very afraid of what this strange person might do to her while she was asleep. What would her father say to her right now, if he knew that Naminé had put herself in this boy's power? And what would her only sometimes sympathetic sister say, even?

As Naminé looked up into the blue eyes above her—that weren't unlike her own irises—she was shocked to find that they seemed to be sparkling with amusement of all things.

Angry, hurt, scared, and a plethora of other emotions she couldn't even begin to name at the moment, Naminé very nearly got up and walked away from the boy. Surely she'd be okay if she just used the front door and went out. As far as she was concerned, Vanitas had already given up or was waiting for her to come back through the empty path in which she'd first been trapped: something she wasn't like to do _ever_ again.

But... Naminé found she was unable to do any of these things, when the spiky-haired-blond in the weird clothes began rubbing soothing circles over her forehead, and began answering things Naminé had been wondering about for a long time.

"I don't really know where to begin filling you in on everything," the boy said sheepishly, as he rubbed the back of his head and offered Naminé a slight, and sincere smile (something she might have returned, if she were able to really move at all). "But I suppose I can begin by winning some of your trust, at least!" the boy continued chipper enough, as he crossed his arms over his chest. It was strange to Naminé how that gesture being done by anyone else would have made them look angry or standoffish, but for this boy, it made him seem all the more approachable somehow.

"First off, you're right about a lot of the fae. They've deluded you humans for too long, and they're trying to use you for something that just sucks. And Vanitas... well, Vanitas has always been a piece of work, and now that you know, he-

"Anyway, you seem to have taught him a lesson well enough with the powers I gave you, Miss Naminé. Well done!" the boy smiled with the pride that someone might have awarded their child. Or worse, Naminé thought with rising horror, their significant other.

Still, his bright smile was a nice enough thing to look at, she supposed. Especially after the darkness she'd just escaped from.

"Wait!" Naminé exclaimed, as she sat up the slightest bit, and some of the fog from her head began clearing up. "Are you saying- Child-Man... are you saying what I did to Vanitas was from you?"

Scratching her head in thought, just as the boy's outraged face made itself known in her mind's eye, Naminé had to wonder when she'd ever acted silly enough to call someone such a name. Especially someone helping her out, but the way he talked was decidedly childish, so…

But then again, as Naminé looked at this person now, as something seemed to harden in his eyes, she realized that perhaps she'd missed something, and maybe she should have been feeling that fearfully, as well. Who knew? Maybe she was actually younger than the boy, then.

And wait just a minute! Was that maid- was she frozen in place?! Naminé wondered in horror, as she looked over the side of the couch she was on, and to the huge wardrobe before her that seemed more like a room than anything else.

"Uhh, you've got that right, Miss. Anyway, I'm going to give you some tea to take the edge off your fear, and then I'll take you home, 'kay? My name is Ventus, by the way."

"Wait- What are you?!" Naminé asked, just as the boy was turning around, and went to what she presumed to be the kitchen for his tea.

Watching his quick departure with a resigned set to her face, Naminé acknowledged that there was a lot she wasn't being told, but of what he _had_ informed her of... she was so very happy. So she _wasn't_ a freak or monster, then.

Though Naminé reckoned she would still want to exact revenge on Vanitas if she could have it (by whatever means necessary), it was a much-needed relief to know that her magical prowess hadn't come from her. And perhaps even more gratifying: Naminé now had some proof that the faeries were as heinous as she'd recently come to believe.

Settling into her seat more comfortably, and with a smug smile on her face, Naminé thought she could easily come to like this Ventus person, even if he had carelessly knocked her down the other day.

Except... why on earth did he have powers, and seem to have excess skin jutting from his skin, where Naminé herself had a gaping hole? The excess skin on Ven's skin almost looked sharp to the touch, too. Like, if he ever got close to kiss someone, he'd puncture a hole in there-

Suddenly feeling as though ice had been poured onto her, when she'd already been freezing to death, Naminé found herself realizing that the powers she'd seen Ventus use couldn't have come from nowhere. And since Naminé knew very few humans who could use magic... that only left one option, didn't it?

He was a faerie! The very creature that he'd just admitted had terrible motives for humans! The very creature that had just attacked her! And how did she even know that this wasn't all a trick, and that Ventus might actually _be_ Vanitas?!

Their names did sound very similar, Naminé realized now. And if he'd failed in getting what he wanted from her via forceful methods, had he found another way to do so? If the hole in her throat was anything to go by, Naminé knew she'd been hurt by someone or something once, and she was _not _going to get hurt again!

So hastily climbing up the Milazos' stairs, Naminé looked for an exit neither Ventus and Vanitas would expect her to escape from, and she found it. Opening a small window in what looked to be a little girl's princess room, Naminé slid down a railing on the side of the house, and once again took off into a run—her tears being left in the wind, and even on the ground, behind her.


End file.
